Pajama Jammin

Product Notes

Dear Parent, To begin, we know you love your kids. You must or you wouldn't take the time to search for music to make them happy. That's good. We love our kids too. And when our kids were little, we wanted to find music to make them happy just like you-but we wanted the music to make us happy too. (Is that being selfish? We don't think so. Kids can listen to the same song 500 times, so finding music that a parent can also enjoy is more like a survival skill.) Anyway, back then, we couldn't find any kid's music that we liked. Then we remembered that we were musicians ourselves, so we had to, as they say, put up or shut up. And that's how The Family Arts Theatre was born. Our first album, It's Halloween, won the Parents' Choice Gold Award. That year they only gave out three gold awards, out of two thousand entries. And we're pretty sure the reason our first album did so well was this: rather than writing music for children, we tried to write music that appealed to the child in all of us-kids, parents, grandparents, non-parents, and even (shudder) teenagers. Our second album, Pajama Jammin', won the Parents' Choice Silver Honors, not too shabby either. Again, we applied the same approach. Basically, we start with a childhood memory that most of us can relate to. In Pajama Jammin', for example, we wrote lyrics about sleepovers, staying home from school, camping in the backyard, bedtime stories, sneaking downstairs for a midnight snack, and so on. Then we wrapped those lyrics around a catchy melody-an absolute necessity-then matched the song's personality to a suitable style of music-anything from polka to rhythm and blues-and voila, a Family Arts Theatre album was born. For us, It's Halloween and Pajama Jammin' were a joy to create, and even after listening to each album over 500 times, we still love the music. Here's hoping you will too. Paula Purnell and Bruce Adamson.

Dear Parent, To begin, we know you love your kids. You must or you wouldn't take the time to search for music to make them happy. That's good. We love our kids too. And when our kids were little, we wanted to find music to make them happy just like you-but we wanted the music to make us happy too. (Is that being selfish? We don't think so. Kids can listen to the same song 500 times, so finding music that a parent can also enjoy is more like a survival skill.) Anyway, back then, we couldn't find any kid's music that we liked. Then we remembered that we were musicians ourselves, so we had to, as they say, put up or shut up. And that's how The Family Arts Theatre was born. Our first album, It's Halloween, won the Parents' Choice Gold Award. That year they only gave out three gold awards, out of two thousand entries. And we're pretty sure the reason our first album did so well was this: rather than writing music for children, we tried to write music that appealed to the child in all of us-kids, parents, grandparents, non-parents, and even (shudder) teenagers. Our second album, Pajama Jammin', won the Parents' Choice Silver Honors, not too shabby either. Again, we applied the same approach. Basically, we start with a childhood memory that most of us can relate to. In Pajama Jammin', for example, we wrote lyrics about sleepovers, staying home from school, camping in the backyard, bedtime stories, sneaking downstairs for a midnight snack, and so on. Then we wrapped those lyrics around a catchy melody-an absolute necessity-then matched the song's personality to a suitable style of music-anything from polka to rhythm and blues-and voila, a Family Arts Theatre album was born. For us, It's Halloween and Pajama Jammin' were a joy to create, and even after listening to each album over 500 times, we still love the music. Here's hoping you will too. Paula Purnell and Bruce Adamson.